ERA14LA425 · Navion A
Mckenney Navion A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Triple Tree Airport (SC00) to Rock Hill - York County Airport (KUZA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA425
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Navion A
- Aircraft type
- Navion NAVION
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N4900K
- Operator
- Mckenney
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Triple Tree Airport (SC00), Woodruff, SCTo Rock Hill - York County Airport (KUZA), Rock Hill, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1949)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (total)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that the airplane departed on the 52-mile flight with about 30 gallons of fuel on board, of which about 4 gallons were in the auxiliary fuel tank. The pilot stated that the airplane was in cruise flight about 2,800 ft and that the engine power was set at 21 inches of manifold pressure and 2,000 rpm. About 30 minutes after departure, the engine "abruptly" stopped producing power. The pilot turned on the electric fuel pump, switched fuel tanks, applied full throttle and mixture and carburetor heat, and attempted an engine restart. However, the engine would not restart. The pilot stated that, during the descent, he noticed that the fuel pressure reading was 2 to 3 pounds per square inch (psi), which was well below the normal operating range of 11 to 14 psi. The pilot selected an open field about 3 miles from the destination airport for the forced landing, during which the airplane struck a ditch and fence, which resulted in the separation of the landing gear.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and the engine and its accessories revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. Although the pilot stated that, after the accident, he reentered the airplane and turned the fuel selector valve and the electric fuel pump to the "off" position, photographs taken during the airplane's recovery revealed that the fuel selector was in the "aux" position. Fuel was found in the main tanks, but the auxiliary fuel tank was empty. Based on the engine's fuel consumption rates, the estimated 4 gallons of fuel in the auxiliary fuel tank would have been consumed during the accident flight at either a slow or fast-cruise power setting.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in the exhaustion of the fuel supply in the selected fuel tank and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA425
- Event ID
- 20140907X00606
- Case number
- ERA14LA425
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dfcbc71210d07e16c8cd50e6fee3221b8347a26f5af16232320890d40466f613; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:43:49.669Z.